


Umbrella

by evieeden



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Captain America: Civil War (Movie), F/M, Grief/Mourning, Protective Natasha Romanov, Repaying Debt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 18:44:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8725999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evieeden/pseuds/evieeden
Summary: Natasha doesn't always understand Steve, but she does owe him a debt.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So here's my first advent fic of the year. I'm posting it a little later though, simply because work completely wiped me out last night before I could post.  
> Anyway, hopefully I'm going to manage to get all 25 out in time this year and I also hope that you enjoy reading them.  
> We're kicking off with a Natasha & Steve moment from Civil War, because I love Civil War, even though there's about a million things in it that I want to change, so I hope you like it.
> 
> Thanks for reading and happy 1st December.

He stood, head bowed at the front of the church, leaning against one of the pews and staring at a picture of the young Peggy Carter.

She was beautiful, Natasha acknowledged, but there were plenty of beautiful women who had tried and failed to catch Steve’s attention, so she was sure that wasn’t the appeal. There was something about Carter’s face that screamed determination and strength. That was it, she decided, _that_ was what had made the difference.

Steve didn’t look up until she stood directly opposite him – situational awareness, her mind screamed at him – and if she hadn’t had most of her physical reactions trained out of her, she would have winced at the blank look in his eyes.

To her surprise he broke the silence first.

“When I came out of the ice, they told me everyone else was gone. When I found out she was alive…I was just lucky to have her.”

Natasha tried to imagine how that would have felt, to go to sleep and wake up to find everyone you loved was dead or near it. That sense of loss. That feeling that life had passed her by. She supposed she was lucky in a way – she had started with nothing when she left the Red Room and the KGB, so she had nothing to lose.

(She wouldn’t think of the man behind the mask – he was lost to her before she could even think of him as hers.)

“She had you back too.” She wanted him to know how important that was.

Whatever he felt that still having Peggy Carter in his life had done for him, she was sure that seeing him alive, knowing that he was all right, had made up for one of the biggest regrets in Carter’s life.

He nodded, then turned his attention to the Accords. She very pointedly didn’t mention his obvious deflection.

“So who else signed?”

She smiled but it wasn’t a happy expression. “Tony, Rhodey… Vision.”

He nodded as if he expected nothing less. “Clint?”

Her teeth gritted behind her smile. That wasn’t a conversation she particularly wanted to reflect on.

“Says he’s retired.”

She would see how long that lasted once this whole situation went inevitably south.

“Wanda?”

Another contentious issue.

“TBD.”

He nodded again.

She knew, even when she made her offer, what his answer would be. “You know I’m off to Vienna for the signing of the Accords. There’s plenty of room on the jet,” she offered. She looked at him and she tried to make him understand her reasoning if nothing else.

A frown pulled his eyebrows together.

“Just because it’s the path of least resistance, doesn’t mean it’s the wrong path.” She wasn’t sure how much of that she believed herself. “Staying together is more important that how we stay together.” At least that part she fully believed in and she knew Steve could hear the conviction in her voice.

There had been times in the Red Room where she had been sent out into the wilderness with the other girls, friends, sisters, and forced into a situation where only one of them could survive. They had been torn apart as each of them fought to stay alive, to stay free in the only way they knew how. Any loyalties, any friendship had been left by the wayside. At the end of it all, when she had been the last girl standing, feeling emptier than if she had been curled up frozen in the snow watching one of her friends run away with the last remaining supplies, waiting for death.

The Avengers were her friends in a way that no other group of people had been before. They were her family. And she could see so clearly the strain in the bonds that held them together and threatened to tear them apart.

She wanted them to stay together so badly. She wanted them back in a position where they could operate together without watching their backs for the government to break them. The Accords could give them that, at least for now.

Steve looked at her and his answer was nothing less than what she expected.

“What are we giving up to do it?” His head ducked down as he shook it lightly. “I’m sorry Nat. I can’t sign it.”

What made it harder for her was that she knew he was genuinely sorry that they couldn’t agree on this.

In many ways, she though he was right.

He had seen what happened when people who were different were registered… segregated. It was only a matter of time before they would become demeaned, punished or worse…

She could already see it happening with Wanda, although she was safe enough for now at the compound.

But someone needed to play Devil’s Advocate.

If Steve didn’t have someone he trusted signing the Accords, then he would be flying blind. For her, signing them meant that she could keep an eye on what the UN and Ross in particular wanted from them.

It wasn’t that she wouldn’t sign the Accords with the full intention of sticking to them, but she had…ties… now, people she trusted and relied on, and she wasn’t prepared to let Ross throw them into a cell on the Raft or put a bullet through their heads without warning.

“I know.” Natasha admired that about him – that Steve could stick so unfailingly to his principles.

She could see him digesting her words, turning them over in his head, and a look of puzzlement crossed his face.

“Then what are you doing here?”

It was something she had been questioning herself, ever since she had boarded the jet to sign the Accords and then redirected the pilot to London.

Something had twisted in her stomach though when she saw the look on his face after reading that text.

It was just nothing, blank.

Most of them had mastered a completely blank expression at some point, but Steve never had. The best he could do – and it was something she found fascinating to watch – was retreat into his Captain America persona.

Yet here was something that could truly cut off all emotion from Steve’s face.

She had slipped out after him, leaving the others to their arguments, only to find him hunched over in the stairwell, sobbing openly.

It was heart-breaking to watch, especially since she had never seen Steve be anything but strong and resolute, or vaguely self-mocking when anything occurred that he struggled with in this new century. It made her think that maybe she had never truly seen behind his mask at all, something that both impressed and terrified her.

This… this grief – for how could it be anything else – this misery, his purity of emotion left her breathless in its intensity.

He was utterly mesmerizing and even if it was spying on him and even though she knew he’d sought out privacy before breaking down, she couldn’t leave, couldn’t tear her eyes away.

She couldn’t move closer either. Instead, she remained paralyzed by fascination and dread as to what had left her friend in this state.

Eventually Sam came looking for him and she had retreated out of sight behind a door and listened as Steve confessed in a halting voice that Peggy Carter had died. Sam had immediately taken over plans for both of them to fly over to England for the funeral and Natasha had taken the opportunity to slip away back to where Tony was deciding who would sign the Accords where. When the chance to sign them in Europe at the UN came up, she volunteered, ignoring the surprised looks she got.

At the time, she had squashed down the little voice in the back of her head that said she had an ulterior motive for coming to Europe at this moment.

She would have to acknowledge that motive, however, if she was going to answer Steve’s question.

Why _was_ she here?

She shrugged a little.

“I just didn’t want you to be alone.”

It wasn’t easy to admit, but Steve understood the words for what they were, his face softening. He was hers now. She didn’t have any masks left to hide behind from him. She had let him in and there was no going back from that.

He knew though, she could tell that he did, the importance of what she was admitting.

Slowly, hesitantly, she reached out towards him. It was a small, cautious gesture. Most of the time with Clint, physical contact was limited to shoulder bumps and sparring. This was different – more… ordinary perhaps.

It didn’t make it any easier.

Luckily Steve followed her lead, allowing her to draw him into an awkward embrace. As she did, she wondered if this was the first time someone had initiated physical contact with him since coming out of the ice, just for the sake of being comforting, or if he hadn’t had another human touch him in affection since 1945.

They were both tense at first until Natasha on a whim ran her hand through his hair. It was like all the strings holding him up were cut at once and he slumped against her, burying his face in her shoulder.

She didn’t say anything when she felt hot tears dampen her skin, just carried on stroking his hair and his back, offering what comfort she could.

It was strange, usually she shunned overt displays of emotion, preferring on the whole people who could contain their emotions. People who were volatile and prone to outbursts she generally avoided, Stark notwithstanding.

But this was Steve. Her friend.

He had sat there and listened while she confessed her fears following the explosion at Camp Lehigh where he had saved her life – something she still owed him for – and then supported her as much as she would allow when Bruce had disappeared.

And he was always so stoic, so careful and self-contained.

But this… For him to allow himself to show this emotion in front of her, to break down and show his weakness, this was an act of trust.

She wouldn’t let him down. She couldn’t.

She just tightened her arms around him and let him grieve, her own body relaxing into the embrace the longer it went on.

The creaking of hinges warned them of someone’s approach and they broke apart as the door to the church swung open.

“Captain Rogers?”

Natasha immediately took a step back when she recognised Sharon Carter’s voice. To her surprise though Steve grabbed hold of her hand as she moved away and squeezed it.

She frowned a little at the gesture, particularly as she thought that he liked Sharon and holding another woman’s hand, no matter how innocent, would not go over well.

But she didn’t move her hand away.

Curiosity with a side of belligerence kept her standing there holding his hair, a studied casual expression on her face. If Steve thought that the contact between them was necessary, then she would trust his judgement and act accordingly.

Sharon paused when she saw the two of them standing there, hand in hand, but no-one who saw Steve’s face in that moment would doubt that the only thing he had been doing was grieving.

“I… I’m sorry to interrupt, but we’re about to complete the burial.”

“I’ll be right there,” Steve promised with a small smile.

Sharon nodded hesitantly, but smiled reflexively back at him. She nodded again, this time more firmly, and then spun on her heel to leave the church.

Natasha watched her go and then squeezed Steve’s hand before releasing it.

“You should go after her,” she suggested.

He tipped his head in her direction. “I should.” He didn’t move.

“Come on.” Natasha linked her arm with his and began leading him out of the church. “I need to get to Vienna and you need to go and…”

“What?” he interrupted her. “Go and what?”

She paused. “Get through this.”

He nodded and tried to smile at her. In return, she leaned up and pressed a kiss to his cheek. She walked away without looking back, even though she could feel his eyes on her back, and then doubled back behind a handy outcrop of trees. She watched as Steve joined the crowd around the grave and Sam clapped him on the shoulder.

He would be all right as long as he had people to watch his back.

She would do it too, keep him safe, in the only way she knew how.

As she left, she saw Sharon approach Steve and tried to swallow down the unfamiliar bitter sting of jealousy she felt. She dismissed the feeling immediately. She didn’t have time for petty emotions like that. She needed to get to Vienna and protect Steve.

After all, she owed him a debt.


End file.
